I was referring to the kind of website with banner ads all-over. Say goodbye to the border of your page.
Think "faucet site" kind of ads... save for pop-ups, because those are horrible.
I wouldn't want that and that would never happen anyway but the sig spam is arguably just as bad and all that money just goes into the pockets of those paying the people to make it in the first place who don't care what mess they cause as long as it gets them free promo. What I've suggested before was a banner ad at the top something like this:  That way advertisers can target their market ie a gambling site would advertise in the gambling board and so on. You could also have more paid memberships like Copper/Silver/Gold/Platinum etc but theymos doesn't seem to be interested in either more ads or any more memberships so it's unlikely to happen. In fact, I'd say there's more chance of sig campaigns being banned outright than more ad slots. Theymos has even considered getting rid of them, which I don't think we should do. More paid Memberships wouldn't hurt either and at least it would essentially kill the account farming/hacking market in the process. |
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So my proposal is to introduce premium altcoin sub forums. Just like the "Altcoin Discussion" is a dedicated sub forum we could introduce this for altcoins. For an example "ETH" could be a sub forum however the criteria for being allowed these sections should be that they've been vetted by dedicated members of the public and been verified as a worthwhile/interesting project as well as being a paid listing (per month). To be clear this doesn't mean "approved" We should only allow a maximum of 5 sub forums at a time and have these on a monthly rent basis. I have no idea how much this should cost however I believe it should be within the thousands per month to allow that money to be paid to moderators/dedicated people to review the project and moderate that sub forum.
Benefits to the forum:
- Vetted projects to assure quality
- Dedicated moderators = Less spam
- More exposure to quality altcoins
- Save time browsing the millions of projects launched every day
Benefits to the developers/owners:
- More exposure
- Dedicated moderators
- Have their project reviewed and be able to showcase that to others that they're project is of high standard
This is somewhat similar to what I've suggested in the past. I wouldn't be against charging all coins to list here as I think alt coins should contribute something to the forum financially as the vast majority of staff time is probably wasted on cleaning up after them, but if theymos felt this was too restrictive then maybe we could still allow alts to have a thread here but also they could pay a fee to get their own sub board/dedicated url. The fee could be a one off or a yearly fee (or both). Maybe the coins could also assign their own mods to the boards which would free up staff time. I think this is something a lot of coins would go for and it would certainly be cheaper than hosting their own boards. these garbage projects are willing to invest a small amount of money in the grand scheme of things because they will make hundreds of thousands in return.
If that's actually true, it's incredible to me--are we still in the world of creating a garbage project, drawing in suckers, and cashing in for that much money? Sounds easier than a gold rush, IMO. Some of these shitcoins have made millions and they promoted them by sig and bounty spam. We literally give them free advertising and they destroy the board in the process. It's win-win for them because they pay people in tokens they've created and once their campaign is done they either sale off into the sunset or create another shitcoin for some bullshit half-assed idea and rinse and repeat. We should only allow a maximum of 5 sub forums at a time and have these on a monthly rent basis. I have no idea how much this should cost however I believe it should be within the thousands per month I commend you enthusiasm to clean up the altcoin section, which it desperately needs, but I don't think this is the way to do it. Sure, a paywall of several thousand dollars a month would weed out many (but not all) of the shitcoins. The issue is for the real coins, who is going to pay that fee? Take a coin like Monero for example, which like bitcoin, has many people developing different aspects of it, no centralized authority and certainly no centralized pool of coins or money to draw from. Who is going to pay the fee for their own board? The developers? Crowdfunding donations? Those sorts can stick with having a thread, or if someone wanted to get their own sub they can cough up for it or try crowd fund it. Dude,
No one is going to pay for an altcoin sub-forum on btctalk,
1. BTC Maximalist call every coin not bitcoin a shitcoin,
why would anyone pay for that slander
2. Many Altcoins have Slack or Telegram or other forums,
so they just relocate all communications to their other forums and dump btctalk.
I disagree. I think if we had the option a lot of coins would pay for a dedicated board as there are several benefits to it. As I've said before, if the only way to list them here was to pay a fee and they got their own board it would also eradicate the paid spam bumping as it would be useless to do. Removing the altcoin section altogether makes more sense than trying to make people pay for it, when no one will.
But this also removes a large portion of the btctalk membership which is only here for the altcoin sections.
Less active membership , lower views count on ads , less money made by the btctalk forum in general,
so unless the forum wants to cut their ad revenue , not a profitable idea.
But one that many Bitcoin Maximalist are in favor of. Maximizing ad revenue is not what Bitcointalk was made for. It's not exactly a profit-driven site, otherwise it would look a lot worse than it currently is Would it? If we got rid of signature campaigns and the only way you could adverse here was via ad slots imaging how much spam would disappear over night. I don't think we need to litter the forum with ad slots but that's essentially what we have right now anyway, only it's done in a destructive way. |
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maybe that would be the last option if the club management and Gareth Bale did not find an agreement, if Real Madrid were willing to release Gareth Bale at a cheaper price maybe there would be many other clubs that recruited Bale. The problem again is his high salary and the demands he would have from the new club. That doesn't leave him with many options. The top 5-6 English clubs who can afford him, PSG who don't really need him and probably nobody from Spain or Italy who would be interested. Gareth Bale would not be a great signing right now, his age & persistent injuries have to factor. He would want really high wages too, it’s a good idea to steer clear imo. Gareth Bale will be happy to sit on the bench all season whilst collecting his monstrous paycheck, but obviously Real don't want that. Most clubs won't want to pay a lot for him because of the problems you said, but also because they won't want to pay the wages and there's very few clubs that can even afford to do so. Real should look to loan him out and get what they can for him if they're not going to play him as they're just pissing money away in the process. I'm sure some club would be willing to pay a portion of his wages and it's better than nothing. If he plays well and remains injury free then they could make an offer for him but I really can't see any club coughing up the amount Bale will want in wages and I doubt he'll leave Real for less than he's getting now as financially it doesn't make sense, though I'm sure he would like to get some game time but at what cost? I think he would be a good fit for United. If that rumoured deal was true about swapping Pogba for Bale and a few other players I think they should take that but doubt it'll happen. If Zidane has no intention of playing Bale (even though I think that's silly) then they need to offload him ASAP. |
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Thats pretty cool OP, unfortunately there are a lot of negative people on this forum that can't imagine anyone would do anything out of kindness. Usually it is a reflection of themselves because they can't imagine even giving a dollar away of their money.
I don't think questioning what some random person on the internet says is negative. If someone wants to give to charity then there are thousands of charities that they can donate to but there's no need to make a song and dance about it and I think that's what people are questioning and I think it's being logical to do so. Call me cynical if you wish but this looks like a complete attention seeking troll post and I'm not surprised people are saying it also looks like a Nigerian scam email. As they say Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Maybe Bill Gates will sign up here sometime asking for advice on what charities to donate to. If he did I don't think people would be amiss if they didn't believe that Billy Boy was looking to give away some funds. If op wanted to prove us all wrong he could easily do so but I doubt he will and until then I'll remain cynical of his true intentions. |
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There is no official procedure. Whether you want to publicly declare alt accounts or not is entirely up to you. Some people have accounts that they'd wish to keep private for whatever reasons and some make them publicly known. Either is fine but most people only have an issue with secretive alts when they're used for nefarious activity (trolling, scamming, abusing giveaways/campaigns or whatever), but as per the forum rules you can have as many accounts as you want regardless of whether you tell everyone about them or not. Usually for being transparent with them neutral feedback is what people tend to do and I think this is probably the best way so I don't think you need to do anything else.
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Has it already started? Saw this guy shitposting: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=851885 jerald125 Yobit sig. No posts at all since May 05, 2019 then makes 33 shitposts today. Just thinking if the ban is over people will again register for the sig camp..
Regardless of when the ban expires, it is not clear if Yobit signature campaign is still ON, and I did not notice that anyone is get e-mail from them like last time. In addition, it makes no sense for YoBit to continue with such campaign, how long it would last this time? In case the situation is repeated, YoBit could get perma-ban on this forum, and users who promote them more then just two month sig ban. If the spam just starts up again as if nothing happened then their signatures should just be permanently blacklisted as they clearly don't care about the situation here. |
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Theymos is very unlikely to implement anything that is overly restrictive to newbies. All it does is punish/restrict genuine newbies whilst the determined trolls would just bare the obstacles and jump through whatever hoops you put in front of them. If you're having issues with newbies (or other users) it's best to self-moderate your threads and mod them however you see fit. I think there should be more self-moderate options though and I have suggested as such in the past and one feature where you could prohibit/bad certain users and even user groups from even posting in your threads.
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The money won't last forever [...]
I really don't think money is an issue here. More than 1.7 million USD (at the current rate) should be more than enough to fund the forum for several centuries.. Still, the money won't last forever, especially if you get rid of adverts. Do you know how much the forum pays out a month? I think theymos mentioned the forum was operating at a loss a while ago (or more money was going to mods than was being taken in). Also, this time last year the money was worth half of that and that could easily happen again. There's a lot of money that will go to taxes including capital gains as well. There's also the possibility of an unexpected tax bill. I think one million was spent on the new forum and will there be costs for future updates or development? How much is theymos paying to Cyrus and co for the account recoveries? It all ads up. We might be ok now but nothing is guaranteed in the bitcoin world. Better to be safe than sorry. |
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Pretty much what malevolent and mprep said. I believe theymos has stated as such previously somewhere. Maybe someone should index all theymos' posts in one thread with a keyword like 'adverts' or advertisement so his posts can quickly be brought up without going through them all. I often find myself spending quite a bit of time trying to find things he's previously said to answer a question someone brought up. 3) The money is not THAT needed ( btctalk's donation address currently holds ~188 BTC) That's pretty much enough to cover the next 'few' years of operating costs 4) It is annoying as hell The money won't last forever and if the forum doesn't technically need it as I've suggested before we could give 100% of it to charity. At least something good comes from it then. Theymos seems to be quite against things like more ad slots though and he said he's even considered getting rid of them but I'd rather see more ad slots than sig spam everywhere which bring no money directly to the forum and yet make an exponential amount of workload for staff. The current ad slots are barely noticeable and I've actually had people in the past ask me why the forum doesn't even have any ads so that tells you how noticeable they are as they just look like another sig advert. Some people have even mistaken them for such and I remember one user actually asking in Meta why he had an advert for something in his signature when he'd mistaken the forum ad for one  I think another advert at the top of a few of the main subs like this would be lucrative: That way advertisers can target their market ie a gambling site would advertise in the gambling board etc. At the moment the ad is pretty random not to mention barely noticeable. I think that's why businesses tend to go with sig campaigns that ads because you get far more exposure. You're all forgetting about one important thing:
Adsense doesn't pay out in Bitcoin.
You don't have to go with adsense as we've had plenty of offers for things in the past, but I actually think it would be wise for the forum to hold some fiat reserves (if it doesn't already). I asked theymos a while back if he does hold some money in cash but I didn't get a response. Holding so much bitcoin is great when the price is on the rise but the forum took an almighty hit when the bubble burst. I'm sure theymos doesn't pay out everything in bitcoin as well, especially not taxes, so having some cash ready would be helpful for those things especially given the fluctuation of bitcoin. One day we might get stung with some expense and have to cash out a lot of bitcoin and if the value is low that makes the blow much worse and that's when those funds will quickly start to dwindle. |
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The main rules (or 'guidelines') should be displayed upon sign up with a link to read the full ones which we should urge all users to read fully before they start posting. Far too many newbies are completely oblivious to the rules and Meta is the last sub board people usually end up in. I would say half of the threads that end up in there aren't even created in Meta but moved from elsewhere (especially when made by newbies). We should also have some of the most commonly broken rules displayed at the top of pages like don't post ref links, alt coins don't belong in this sub etc etc. The warnings could maybe just be displayed for only newbies and they go away once you get one merit. @Theymos has/had the idea of displaying a welcome message for new users, depicting the essentials amongst which plagiarism was to be highlighted amongst a narrow selection of common rule violations (see Writing a welcome message). The message was planned to also be shown in the Help section. The above got stuck in the conceptualization plane though, perhaps due to comments with multiple suggestions that may have caused @theymos rethink the content and left it for later on. The welcome message would be a good spot though to emphasize what was intended to be displayed in the draft: <…> Common rule violationsThese are the most common rule violations that newbies make. There are other rules than these. - Plagiarism: If you copy some text from somewhere, then you should have a good reason for it, and you must link to the source. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. Changing a few words around doesn't matter. If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.
- Multi-posting: Do not post twice in a row in a topic. Instead, edit your old post.
- Low-content posts: Do not post low-content garbage like "agreed!", "nice project!", etc. You can be banned for this, and it's also pointless if you want to increase your rank, since you will never get merit for such posts.
<…> Something like this would be ideal, but not the full thing theymos posted. I think it's too long and newcomers will just gloss over it. Give them the abridged / most important rules then provide some links for further reading, like the full rules/guidelines, helpful guides and a history of the forum or whatever. If they're greeted with a barrage of text most will just treat it like they do with t's and c's and skip it. |
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There ban is up in 8 days. I want to know what is to stop them from getting banned again. If the spam is the same then I'm sure they'll get another ban with a longer duration. I am sure the spam will be the same, but if you do not give them 48 hours to ban the spammers from participating in the campaign how is that even fair? I bet they bann people and the people don't even realize they are banned and still contirune to post Well I wasn't involved in the ban nor can I give them, but I agree they should be given a warning first and a grace period to sort things out and that's one of the things I included in the Signature Campaign Guidelines but they were never enforced. I think people did try to contact Yobit also but their account had been inactive for quite some time if I recall correctly (but I could be wrong). Yeah, I just saw that. Looks good so hopefully Steve can keep on top of things now. They said they didn’t accept people with red trust, but somehow, they were still able to join, and atleast given the impression that they were getting paid for their posts (Although im pretty certain they were actually getting paid. See mdayonliners post history where he put up some screenshots of him getting paid (IIRC).)
Yobit added balance to their yobit account just like they did to non-redtrusted users.
Mday was proof that negative trust users were getting paid. It was pretty much open season when that campaign came back because anyone and everyone could sign up and that's why it was abused so quickly. I'm sure account farmers and multi-accounters also quickly took advantage and that's what happens when you have no active manager. |
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Looks much better. I would be careful with the character count though as it's not always indicative of a good post. People in the past have just unnecessarily waffled on when they didn't need to just to hit their x amount of character requirements. Some users even added invisible junk to the end of their post so the bot that was counting their characters would be tricked into thinking it was a countable post. I could have stopped there but lets just string this paragraph out until I hit one hundred characters for sure. Some more text just in case. That should do. Last week's pay rate - $3, $2, $1, $0.50 per 10 posts (rank based)
Current pay rate - $11 per 10 posts (all ranks)
How could you pay the same rate to JR. and Hero/Legendary member? Show some respect at least for Hero & Legendary members, though seniors deserve more than a Jr member imo. Why does it matter? Being a Legendary doesn't mean you make better posts and if they were all making the same quality posts then maybe they should all be paid the same, but that's up to the campaigns and if they're ok with paying the same for smaller sigs. Personally I don't care whether someone is getting 1 cent or ten dollars per post and that's up to the person whether they want to accept the rates or not, but what I am concerned is the spam. Hopefully that will stop now with these changes as long as Steve keeps on top of things. Unfortunately, I am not anymore included in the list but that is fine since I already feel that I should go as it has become too toxic for me lately. Anyway, without any drama further, thanks a lot to Stake and Steve for this wonderful opportunity -- no single payment missed and always on schedule. Despite some shortcomings (especially in the eyes of his many critics), Steve is a good signature manager for me.
Now I know someone is doing their job because you were one of the problem posters obviously just forcing yourself to post. It also can't be that toxic if you immediately try to get another advertisement:  Are you paying on stake account or on users addresses?
If you are paying on users address and you add this address on the spreadsheet it will help to find abusers, some users use even 50 accounts here on the forum.
Steve is paying through the website,straight to our accounts. Its real some even have hundreds and have a small time company in spamming sigs in this forum,the usage of direct bitcoin wallet payout will be useful to eliminate spam yes,its up to steve if he'll change the rules to that. Why would someone be dumb enough use the same address multiple times on different accounts though? Some people are that dumb or sometimes they use addresses that are later spendlinked and that's when they're busted. When you've got dozens of accounts it will become difficult to manage them all effectively and many screw up this way by using the same telegram or address or whatever. Having users pay into their own accounts would probably be easier for you to spot abuse via IPs and such, but maybe that's not something you would do. I suggest for the rate to be not uniform, every rank should have different rate.
I guess the following rate would be competitive enough, you can already have a good poster that will be loyal to your campaign.
Here's my suggestion for 10 posts per rank.
Hero - 20 usd
Sr - 15 usd
Member - 11 usd
Why? And why did you stop at Hero? Because you're not Legendary and that rank doesn't effect you? |
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I thought this was supposed to be a decentralized fourm, It's not. Never has been. It's a centralised forum with rules and anyone can be banned for breaking them. There ban is up in 8 days. I want to know what is to stop them from getting banned again. If the spam is the same then I'm sure they'll get another ban with a longer duration. Whats the difference between the spam from stake and the spam from yobit?
Yobit spam was far more intense and has easily been the worst campaign the forum has seen for quite some time, but the damage they did in such a short amount of time was ridiculous. They had no manager at all and accepted anyone and as such it was quickly exploited. Stake isn't much better but I would support a Stake ban if they don't clean up their campaign asap. |
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I hate having to "defend" BSV and BCH, which were created with deception in mind, are technologically bankrupt, and are run by huge assholes, but you can't say that their supporters broke a contract with you when they didn't. Give them a newbie-warning flag if you want, but not a contract-violation flag unless they actually broke a contract with you. (Note that you might have a case for breach of implied contract if you were actually tricked into buying one of these coins instead of BTC.)
Actually, given the title of this thread, this discussion is off-topic. But since we're on meta, where every thread derails...  I strongly believe that I do indeed have a case of "breach of contract" by all Fork-Coiners. We're all part of the Bitcoin project. We do have a social contract based on best practices of the open source community. One of the unwritten rules of this contract could be expressed as "if you fork a project, rename it so that others are not led to believe you're the original". This part of the open source community social contract has been breached at least by BCash. So, yes, I do indeed reserve the right to say " BCash broke a contract with me". (I wouldn't necessarily use bitcointalk's trust system to make this claim, though, since BCash seems highly irrelevant here.)But this is exactly the issue: "trust" and what people deem to be shady behaviour is completely subjective. One person can think anything with bitcoin in the name other than the original bitcoin is being shady and trying to mislead whereas others don't or don't care. I think people who try become escrow with no previous trade history are either pretty naive or are trying to steal others money but either way I don't trust them. Does it deserve negative feedback? Arguably, yes. Some people would disagree. Some people don't care. Account selling is another issue. Some people find the selling of bitointalk accounts extremely shady. Others don't. Others are on the fence. Selling an account isn't directly a scam but it can certainly lead to them. Should we leave negative for account sellers? Some people think so and other don't. Even more probably don't care. People get into petty spats here for a multitude of reasons and others are quick to try dig up dirt and blow things out of proportion to try get their comeuppance and they sometimes use the feedback system to do that and the cycle continues. This update does help to curb that but it's also going to make life easier for a lot of scammers, but as I've always said you're never going to be able to please everyone with any feedback system whatever you do. |
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I'm thinking that some of the banned users here just created another account without telling it to anybody unless there are something that mods and admins do to prevent this to happen.
That's exactly what most of them do and unless they're silly and publicly link them together somehow then nobody will ever know. 99% of the time admins don't look into this sort of stuff or even ban evasion, even when there's multiple pieces of evidence tying alts together including numerous cases of ban evasion. It's why I've suggested we get rid of the rule because it's useless if it's not enforced properly or at all and losing the account is probably punishment enough in most cases. In the past I've even suggested people just create a new account once banned because I actually feel it's unfair because users who actually follow the rules and leave the forum because they've been told they can't have any more accounts whilst yet there's ban evaders who have dozens of others that are free to carry on as a normal or they just create a new one. You can even create a new account from the same connection and nothing will be done about it. So there's people who follow the rules and leave who might have just been permabanned for one copy and paste whilst there's users here with dozens of troll accounts, many already permabanned, are free to continue being a nuisance on all the others. Who is the bad guy here? The destructive troll with dozens of accounts or the guy who got banned for one case of plagiarism from years ago who creates another but won't make the same mistake again? Follow the actual rules and you should be out. Break them and you can do as you please. It's also why I think we should consider some sort of fine to get your account back, especially for the lesser cases where someone may have been banned for one or two cases of plagiarism but not be considered a 'net positive to the forum so won't be unbanned or issued a sig ban. Money can be given to charity if it's seen as a conflict of interest or the forum profiting from the banning of people. And just for the record, I don't think people should be ban evading but it's useless when it's as simple as just creating a new account and nothing is ever looked into hence why I think we need to amend certain rules or change how ban appeals work. |
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I'm starting to really hate this can of worms that theymos decided to open for bill gator. So now every asshole will be able to weasel out of a ban with some whining and helpful hints from an account farmer/trader? And why should this one get a temp ban? Just unban him altogether and give him back his signature, he's got a perfect alibi As I said before, a lot of people are going to use this excuse and it's going to be something that is hard to verify (and most won't be able or willing to provide proof that they bought the account either). There's also the issue of who we unban and don't. I keep getting messages asking for unbans because people have started to notice we're doing them now, but it's meant to be for people who are a "net positive" to the forum (which is obviously a very subjective thing anyway), but a lot of people who are messaging me either have no earned merit or only one or two or handful at best. These people usually don't really fall under the 'net positive' term, but is it still fair that a Hero/legendary account gets banned for one/two/a handful of copy and pastes whilst others get off? Maybe we should consider some sort of fee/fine to get their account (or signature) back for the others who don't qualify. As recently discussed the money could go to charity. I would see it like paying a speeding fine. Whilst copy and pasting is still a serious offence here it can sometimes still be quite harsh to get a death sentence for it, especially if it's only a few copy and pastes and there's a lot of people who aren't going to meet the net positive terms and it's a hassle for staff to keep having to decide who does and doesn't get lenience and the ones who don't are going to whine and pester us about it. Maybe paying a fine to charity will just make things easier. Yes, people shouldn't have copied and pasted in the first place but we could see this as paying their debt back to society so at least some good comes of it. |
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I'm still of the opinion that that sub should be locked/archived. So are seemingly most of the staff last time we discussed it. It should be for notable sources, but it's been spammed with everything and everything for the past few years, not to mention all the alt coin spam which don't even belong there. It's also being abused by various websites as a promotional tool just to drive hits to their site. Any worthwhile article can just be posted and discussed in bitcoin discussion as they do anyway so losing it isn't really a big issue to me. When it was created any mention of bitcoin in the media was probably a big deal, but now it isn't. At a bare minimum we should change what can and can't be posted there and any bitcoin-related site should be prohibited and enforce the notable source rule more strictly to stop the promo spam. People got paid to share news/article from news media? I was sure it's clever way to fulfill their signature campaign rules.
But it's pretty much useless idea without limitation such as only Member/Copper Member and above who can make thread on Press board.
It's abused both by sig spammers and the people who run the websites. Some people in the past have even used bots just to scrape sites, format them properly then post them there. It's a place where you can legally get away with copy and pasting because doing so isn't against the rules and for sig spammers they can grab an easy post without having to contribute anything. |
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Can the top five winners send me their addresses (either this account or my main is fine). I am a little disappointed with today's game but that is probably because of high standards set up in previous CL games. This was a final after all and you don't go to final to play but to win it. Congrats to Liverpool, well deserved title for them.
I think Spurs players will be unhappy with the performance since they never really gave their best shot tonight. After trailing 1:0 they should have gone all in and made hell for Liverpool in last 20 minutes. Who cares if you loose the final 1:0 or 2:0.
It was a disappointing game. Having an all English final was never that exciting to me. Was just like another Premier League game, only worse. Given what was at stake neither team looked like they were that bothered during the match. Bang average game to be honest. Good luck everyone. Still very close at the top with only a few points deciding places so there could be a mix up depending on the outcome. I went tactical with the 2-2 draw given the positioning of those directly above and below me and because nobody other than tokeweed went with the draw (and same score) and I can't catch him in second anyway. I'm joint sixth so need at least a point from the draw which would take me into fifth place as slaman29 who is directly above me and LTI_btc who is directly below both went for Liverpool wins. For the record I think Liverpool will pinch it but decided to go all or nothing as the three points would take me all the way into third place as those above also backed the Liverpool win. Only one person had the balls to go with a Spurs win but he unfortunately can't win anything at this stage.
Keep an eye out for the new Premier League and CL pools that I'll open for players to sign up within the next few days.
Well, gotta say you and toke took the risk indeed, it was probably the more pragmatic approach as well, I just saw as well that LTI and slaman took wins so at least we'll see someone win 5th place outright. Yeah, was looking like Spurs might get the equaliser in the last 25 mins or so as they dominated the match for that bit, but then Liverpool got the second goal and the game was all over. Keep an eye out for the new Premier League and CL pools that I'll open for players to sign up within the next few days.
Put a link here and in PL thread so we make sure that all previous participants noticed new pools as well. The more the merrier, I already have one new participant lined up to join us next year. I will do. I will wait until I've got all the payments sent out for this pool first. Hopefully there will be more players this year. Hopefully I can get another sponsor to boost the pot again. Didn't get a reply from Cloudbet about doing it again. Might set up an auction for it. |
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I've suggested something like this numerous times before. I've even suggested either a percentage or even all of the money from donator ranks/more ad slots could go there (which I am still in support of because donator ranks have multiple benefits for the forum): I'd like to get the community's thoughts on possible alternatives to permabans for things like copy and pasting/plagiarism. One that seems to have the support of quite a few people is instead of a permanent ban a user has a signature ban instead (IE the signature is removed so they can no longer earn here). The signature ban could be permanent, temporary, or indefinite until the user has proven their worth over time and then it's reinstated. We could even make it so after the user has received x amount of merit then their signature is possibly reinstated (it would have to be a lot - at least one hundred in my opinion). I think there are several levels of severity in plagiarism and not all are equal and in some cases a permanent ban forever can be a little harsh (especially if it was just one silly mistake). I think there's a big difference in someone quoting something from Wikipedia to answer someone's question, and those that purposefully copy someone else's post here or 'text-spin' it just to earn from signatures (I'm really not sure if those users deserve a second chance, but good luck to them trying to get hundreds of merit to get it back). To be honest, removal of their signature to signature spammers might as well be a permanent ban and most will probably just give up immediately if they can't earn here, but for others it would be shame if there's no chance of forgiveness especially if they've been an active or helpful member of the community and just screwed up one time. Theymos has mentioned before signature bans and blacklists and was something that was supposed to happen with the signature campaign guidelines but maybe he could make this his next priority after the account recovery tool.
Alternatively, what do people think about paying some sort of fine to get their account back? The money probably wouldn't go to the forum or staff but to a bitcoin-accepting charity instead. That way at least a good cause benefits and they're still paying a financial penalty.
You could maybe give people two options for those that are banned for plagiarism: You can either have a sig ban indefinitely but are allowed to post, or possibly even allowed to earn the signature back by getting a sufficient amount of merit (say maybe at least 100), or just pay a substantial fine (at least $100). As I've mentioned before I'm strongly in favour of more donator ranks that give you a bigger signature and maybe they could get their signature back by purchasing one of them. I think we should also give them the option of earning it back via merit so at least they have two options and if they don't want to pay anything then they can try earn their signature back by contributing something worthwhile.
You can vote for two options on the poll just in case you are for both a sig ban and paying a fine. If you have any other alternatives or issues with the current options then please state so. You can also discuss how much a fine should be or how much merit a user should earn before they get their signature back.
1) Make it so that posts from lower ranked members don't bump the thread to the top (ideally up to Member)
2) Get rid of the Announcement board completely and instead charge ICOs a fee to list here and once they do they get their own sub board in the Alt Coin section. If this happens then paid bumping is useless. Many of them would probably like having their own board and they could even be responsible for moderating it or mod it how they like.
ICOs should probably be paying a fee to list here anyway. They get a crazy amount of advertising for free and are probably causing 95% of the staff workload by all the spam and abuse that is happening and staff are left to run around like headless chickens trying to clean it all up. It's about time they have to start compensating for this. Money raised can either go to hiring more staff to combat spam or given to charity.
Thoughts or anyone have any other suggestions to combat this abuse?
More donator ranks have been suggested numerous times by various people including me. More income isn't needed right now As I've said before, you could always give it to charity or use it to fund worthwhile developments that benefit the community or crypto. Out of interest, does the forum hold any fiat reserves? Based on the fact that I now felt that the driving force behind theymos' decisions was not $
Right, I don't care about making money from the forum personally. (I've actually thought about getting rid of the forum ads, since it's often a big headache and the forum has enough reserves for a long time, but operating at a significant loss while there's money basically just sitting on the table feels wrong, even if the level of loss is sustainable for quite a while.) I don't disbelieve you when you say that you don't care that much about making money from here as there could have been numerous ways that you could have personally enriched yourself both legitimately and illegitimately from the forum over the years and I've even suggested that you pay yourself a reasonable wage and do admin duties here full time before because one is badly needed, but saying things like you've thought about getting rid of ad slots baffles me. Why? Because they're too much of a hassle and headache for you to organise? If so, can't you either automate the procedure of people buying them or delegate a staff member to be in charge of advertisements instead of just considering removing them completely? Delegating workload to various people will seriously free up your time to do much more productive things and stop you from being pestered about things you don't have the time or energy to do (and other staff members are then pestered who don't even have the means or authority to help). The forum shouldn't be losing money or throwing it away and even more ad slots wouldn't hurt (especially when the forum is covered by sig ads that the vast majority only contribute to the deterioration of the board). Even if we don't need the money the reserve funds won't last forever, but you could even put the money made to good use. Use it to finance worthwhile projects that will benefit bitcoin or even the world, or even give it all away to charity. Nearly 500 people died in floods in Kerala, India last month. We could make sure it gets into the hands of people who actually need it there. What's even worse is that you always get scumbags popping up here trying to use various tragedies to scam by asking for donations. Happens with every natural disaster. I'm sure if we had some sort of official donation drive many people would contribute to it in knowing that the money will actually get to the right people and make a difference. I lost access to my thigh ranked accounts on bitcointalk.
What is your original account? Did you follow the procedure to recover it? this forum really is not about making money, but making money is now part of this forum. Actually, it's okay to earn money here as long as you also contributes in discussions pretty well.
I think this is well put. As I've said before, this forum (along with bitcoin) is a victim of its own success and just attracts both the desperate and nefarious. I think it's great that people can a earn here and the money made can actually make a difference to people's lives (I know it has mine), but it's frustrating how it's being exploited by masses of people just crapping up the forum in the laziest and greediest way possible (and it's the campaigns that should be held responsible for this). Whilst this forum isn't about making money, it is a forum about money (and a new type of money) and I don't think we should forget that. Measure should be put in place to try stop the abuses that go on though and I think punishing campaigns that don't do their job would go a long way. I also still think we should introduce paid bitcointalk ranks like Silver and Gold Member that have the same benefit of Seniors and Heroes or whatnot. This would essentially kill account farming and account sales and like the op has already experienced the majority of account sellers are just opportunistic scammers now. Most of them don't even seem to have any accounts for sale and just hope they get someone desperate enough to send them money first. I honestly don't see any negatives about letting users purchase such memberships. The money made could either be used to fund worthwhile projects (I've suggested before a decentralised forum software, a better DDOS-type service or even a bitcointalk seastead/Island) or just give the money to charity. The only people who are going to lose here are account farmers whilst the benefits are numerous.-------------- I've thought before about giving forum badges (or maybe even forum BTC credit) for donating x BTC to Bitcoin-accepting charities,
No theymos don't involves badges, I see a situation where forum users will only donate just to be recognized via badges which goes against the whole idea of charity. It doesn't go against it. Many charities actually give out some sort of badges if you donate to them:  They used to (or still do) do a special gold one every year which became quite collectable:  Then there's also the more famous poppy appeal:  It's just an incentive for people to donate and a way of showing your support and everyone benefits. The original bitcoin donation drive to fund the new forum came with additional perks like the VIP tag and custom titles etc. Getting a few perks for donating to a good cause isn't a big deal. I'll love it, if every one could donate anonymously e.g I won't what to be judge based on the amount of bitcoin I can afford to donate. You can already send money to any charity you like anonymous. You don't need to involve the forum with that and there are plenty of charities that already accept bitcoin. More seriously, this sort of donation pool might have some extra positive effects due to its ability to more effectively market itself and its ability to engage in more complicated projects than just "donate to x charity". But for it to be better than just having donors donate to whoever they want, the pool should probably be an actual tax-exempt nonprofit.
I've suggested we set up our own charity before. The community could vote on where the money goes every month/year/whatever, or maybe we even only send it to charities that accept bitcoin directly. We could also work with trying to spread adoption of bitcoin by working with charities to adopt it themselves if they already don't. ---- BTW, there are already a couple of British charities that accept bitcoin directly: https://rnli.org/support-us/give-money/bitcoin-donations https://www.savethechildren.org/us/more-ways-to-help/ways-to-give/ways-to-help |
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Good luck everyone. Still very close at the top with only a few points deciding places so there could be a mix up depending on the outcome. I went tactical with the 2-2 draw given the positioning of those directly above and below me and because nobody other than tokeweed went with the draw (and same score) and I can't catch him in second anyway. I'm joint sixth so need at least a point from the draw which would take me into fifth place as slaman29 who is directly above me and LTI_btc who is directly below both went for Liverpool wins. For the record I think Liverpool will pinch it but decided to go all or nothing as the three points would take me all the way into third place as those above also backed the Liverpool win. Only one person had the balls to go with a Spurs win but he unfortunately can't win anything at this stage.
Keep an eye out for the new Premier League and CL pools that I'll open for players to sign up within the next few days.
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